Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

The Supreme Principle of all, the One and Only One, who " standeth perpetually " (§ 14), is the Intelligible Logos (jy vor]T>j <7Ta.<Ti?, cf. § 11), the 6 e<TTo>? of the Christianized Gnosis, as seen especially in the Simonian Great Announcement. He is the Cause of the perpetual motion of the Hylic Cosmos. Compare this with the following passage of Numenius :

" Now there are two modes of life, the first of the First and the second of the Second God. For it is evident that the First God should be standing (etrTok), and the Second, on the contrary, moved. The First, then, is occupied about things intelligible, and the Second about things intelligible and sensible.

" Marvel not that I say this ; for thou shalt hear what is still more marvellous. For I say that it is not the motion that appertains to the Second, but the rest that pertains to the First, which is the innate 1 motion ' from which both their cosmic order and their eternal community and their preservation [or salvation] is poured forth on things universal." 3

1 That is, being logos, as from the Creator or Second Mind.

2 Cf. Exx. iv. 2 ; xv. 2 ; xix. 3 ; and Frag, xviii.

Quoted by Eusebius, Prcep. Evang., XI. xviii. 20, 21 (539 B), ed. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1867), ii. 41. We do not know Numenius' date, but it was probably about the first half of the first century A.D. Though Numenius is almost invariably designated as a Pythagorean, he was rather a universalist, for his object was not only to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, but to show that they were not at variance with the doctrines and mysteries of the Brahmans, Jews, Magi and Egyptians.

THE OLYMPIAN PATH

15. In § 15 the Gnosis is again declared to be the only Path of Salvation or Safety.1 It is the Way Up to the Mount,2 the Olympian Path.

The term Eleusis was also interpreted as Anabasis, or the Way Up.3 Compare the Jewish commentator in the Naassene Document (§ 27):

" First is the Mystery called ' Eleusis ' and ' Anaktoreion' — Eleusis because we come from Above,4 streaming down from Adamas,5 . . . and Anaktoreion from ' Eeturning Above. ' "

" WHEN MIND BECOMES A DAIMON "

16. The next main doctrine touched on is one of immense importance, for it gives us the inner teaching which illuminates the " dark saying " in the "Poemandres" (§ 24), when treating of the Way Up (avoSo?) :

"And thou surrenderest thy way of life unto the daimon."

For in our treatise Hermes tells us that at death :

"The mind stript of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgment and whatever chastisement it hath deserved."

The key to this is the sentence (§ 21) :

"When mind becomes a daimon, the law requires that it should take a fiery body to execute the services of God."

1 Cf. the passage from Jamblichus quoted above.

2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 1 : " The Passing o'er the Mount."

3 Uf. C. H., i. 24.

4 Eleusis meaning Coming, Advent.

5 The Man or Mind.

At death, the mind, of its own nature, perforce becomes a " servant of God," a Therapeut 1 ; the man is his own judge and his own chastizer.

The " fire of hell " is then but the reflection of the light of the mind ; it is the burning remorse of a mind that now sees the inevitable results of every selfish action — thought, word, and deed ; that each of these comes inevitably back on the sender forth of it.

The soul, thus, lives out (and that too in the most realistic fashion, it realizes the actuality of the law in all its most minute details) the inevitable consequences of its past vicious deeds in body.

Here we have the hint of a psychology and of an inner teaching that persuades us there was a profound wisdom at the back of the intermediate instruction of these schools.

Compare this most reasonable theory of after-death "illumination" with the crudities of the eternal torment idea of popular religion with which we are so familiar, and reflect on what a "falling off" there has been from the Gnosis of the early days.

And what is the " fiery body " of the mind but the ray-like or starry vehicle of the man, the avyoeide? y ao-TpoeiSes of Philoponus ? 2